Your Balls Out NBA Finals Preview

Think hard about this one: Are the 2011 NBA Playoffs the most surprising, or the least predictable, the world has ever seen?

There’s a difference, I swear. Surprises strike hard, and without warning, but at least they live somewhere in the general vicinity of possible outcomes. If we share in a collective "radar", the elements of surprise camp out on the margins. A truly unpredictable playoffs borders on random. It’s not just that the winners and losers don’t match our expectations; the stories, the characters, and the emotions that color them weren’t even in our vocabulary.

Is that unspeakably abstruse? Here, I’ll break it down: Prior to last week, I hadn’t given a lick of thought to what a Mavs/Heat rematch would mean. I’d said often that the Heat could mess around and win a title, but I never imagined they might do it so respectably—with a smidgen of honor, even? There’s a changing of the guard underway, perhaps, and yet neither the veteran Mavericks, nor the Heat—who haven’t really come into focus yet—really mark that turning point.

This isn’t the NBA in transition, it’s a rupture, a one-way ticket to Rod Serling’s parlor. Miami versus Dallas. What, exactly, hangs in the balance? Dirk could use a ring, but his reputation has already undergone a massive overhaul—and his legacy received a good deal of just recognition—from the run he has had so far. Jason Kidd is a Hall of Famer, and a master of his position, title or no title. Sometimes, the greats don’t get their championships. Sometimes, we hold this against them; sometimes, we don’t. Kidd is in that latter category. There’s a painful irony to Shawn Marion reaching the Finals when Steve Nash never has and likely never will, but that neither elevates Marion nor makes us think less of Nash.

Otherwise, Dallas is a blank slate, except for the fact that they’re Dallas. That’s where the rematch angle really gains traction, despite little to no one wanting (or needing) to revisit that series. It feels like ancient history, with Wade having to prove himself all over again (and, at the moment, floundering), and Dirk not exactly needing to exorcise any demons. Other than Dirk, only Jason Terry remains from that squad. If anything, the Mavericks are the team looking fresh and reborn, immune to the past and on a roll. The Heat, while they have done much to earn our good graces, or at least defuse the outright hatred, are up against last summer. This is pressure of their own making, but the incessant Bosh-bashing, and James being robbed of the MVP, have certainly opened the door for backlash-against-the-backlash, or even something resembling sympathy.

Miami won in 2006, and proceeded to watch their team disintegrate, so they tore it apart and rebuilt in garish fashion. The Mavs, on the losing side of that series—you can throw in "robbed" or "choked" as you see fit—took it slow. Only after 2007’s supernatural playoff fail did they part ways with Avery Johnson. The team has stayed in the playoffs, and loaded up on past-their-prime stars without it looking desperate. The Mavs didn’t peak, crash, and then smolder. Rather, they stayed a veteran team, just cycling in new supporting cast. The Tyson Chandler acquisition, so key to this season’s run, very much fit the bill of moderate-risk, sound-reward moves. "Veteran" and "experience" can be a state of mind, a credo, rather than the arc of a particular core.

When the Big Three came to Boston, I saw it as launching a new age of superstar colonization. Garnett, Pierce, and Allen pale in comparison to the the Heat’s triumvirate, and the Celtics’ supporting cast and coaching staff played an enormous role in that 2008 title. But let’s not forget that the three of them agreed to the arrangement before it came true. That’s a Celtics title; that transaction was a player-prompted maneuver, and could have ended up somewhere else, albeit with two other All-Stars joining KG. The Celtics were the best option, the ideal staging area, for Garnett to team up with two other big names and make a title run.

The Heat take this model to an extreme. The 2006 title means nothing to this current group, and how could it? Wade’s legacy will acknowledge the first one, but what happens with Bron and Bosh will figure just as prominently. Same as Kobe Bryant’s, before and after Shaquille O’Neal. In this supposed rematch, the victors have all but disappeared, while the losers have, at least in spirit, persisted. Already, Dallas has the last laugh, and shown that just maybe, the patience and process shunned by Miami can pay off.

All this is said from the vantage point of now. From a pure basketball perspective, Dallas/Miami is as hard to gauge as anything in these playoffs. Miami has relied on LeBron’s utter brilliance. More recently, Chris Bosh has exploded and in a couple of games, Mike Miller earned his keep. Wade may be injured; still, he’s poured in points late. More significantly, the Chicago series marked the first appearance of the Bron/Wade/Bosh/Mike Miller/Udonis Haslem line-up, which all along, was supposed to be their team at crunch time. No matter who shows up, the Heat have James and a stifling defense.

How much of a juggernaut they will be depends on what else they manage, and for how long. So far, Miami has yet to string together more than a few possessions in a row of offensive team fireworks; so far, they haven’t really needed to. In Derrick Rose, they slowed a devastating offensive player. Then again, Dirk and Rose are very different threats.

The Mavs are an even bigger mystery. Throughout the playoffs, they have contained, if not stopped, scorers like Kevin Durant and Kobe Bryant. There’s really no stopper on the team. The Mavs throw players at a stud until one sticks. Jason Kidd, with his strength and unique court intelligence, and Shawn Marion reborn as a less athletic Shawn Marion, have proven particularly effective. But if the Heat need to dominate defensively to win games, or at least an entire series, then the Mavs’ kaleidoscopic system needs points to make up for defensive slippage. Chandler may be able to put Bosh back in his place; who will take on James, much less James and Wade? It’s a tough question, until you remember how many stars the Lakers have, or how explosive Durant and Westbrook are on paper.

At the other end, there’s no reason why, up until this point, the Mavs should have been able to get by with Dirk and a bunch of unlikely heroes. Nowitzki has been historic, and yet it’s taken contributions from others to will this team into the Finals. It hasn’t been a cakewalk, and at the same time, the Mavs have led the league in resourcefulness this postseason.

Maybe the Heat in the Finals answers the doubters, and Nowitzki’s run has repaired everyone’s bad memories. If Dirk is ineffectual, this post-season’s accomplishments even out. A blown 2-0 lead will fall on him, and the past will once again seem relevant. If the Heat sweep Dallas, they may go back to being the scourge of basketball, a new dark age that will prompt other teams to take similarly drastic, and outlandish, personnel measures.

This much is certain; both teams are somehow unexpected and almost transparently simple. It’s enough to make one wonder why, exactly, we spend so much time trying to guess what’s next, or how we’ll feel about it.

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